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After WWII, fear stalked the corridors of power in Great Britain. Irrespective of partisan allegiance, the ruling classes knew that because so many had sacrificed so much for so few, it wouldn't take much to trigger a popular uprising. Hence the emergence of what historians call the "post-war consensus", a cross-party acceptance that nationalisation, strong trade unions, robust regulation, progressive taxation, and an expanded welfare state would be needed to placate the restive electorate.
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In 1945 the democratic socialist Clement Attlee swept to power. A landslide against war leader Winston Churchill, who contrary to today's far-right mythology was widely hated by the working classes and armed forces, and expected to be a disaster for peacetime domestic policy. Attlee's government embarked on a radical programme of social reforms to safeguard all citizens, "from the cradle to the grave". There began two decades of year-on-year economic growth, the longest in the UK's history.
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Thanks to British socialism, made possible by elite terror at the prospect of revolt, every citizen now enjoys financial protection in the event of unemployment or sickness, a state pension when they retire, standardised minimal living and working conditions, universal free healthcare and education, financial help with funerals...the list goes on and on. Attlee's bold achievements in improving people's lives caused a surge in upward mobility that led to the cultural revolution of the 1960s.
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@ApostateEnglishman@mastodon.worldSo don't let anyone tell you CEOs in America having to beef up their personal security, while feeling increasingly nervous and unsafe in their luxury hotels, gentrified blocks and gated communities can ever be a bad thing. That should just be the price of extreme wealth and power, and as the British post-war experience shows, and recent events in South Korea further highlight, all that's needed for concrete change is enough people refusing to accept less.
Then no more shots need be fired.
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@ApostateEnglishman I think in the deleted version of this post that I briefly saw, you mentioned something about illusion, and helping people see through the illusion of prestige is key to its undoing.
@corbden Thanks for noticing! This is a new account and I'm still struggling to condense complex ideas down into 500 character chunks, with each installment shareable on its own.
It's quite an artform! 
@ApostateEnglishman I used to do it with 140 characters before Twitter had a threading feature 
People said that was an ineffective way to communicate but it allowed ideas to spread quickly in massive conversations that included millions of people.
You're doing very well at condensing so far!
@ApostateEnglishman Redistributing that wealth voluntarily would have a huge impact on their apparently justified paranoia. Funny how the solution is right in their own hands.
@ApostateEnglishman Tots and pears. That’s the way it goes.
@ApostateEnglishman I just agreed so hard with this thread that I tried to follow you again. What's really sad about the British situation is that successive governments have been keen to dismantle all of these basic protections "to save money", when this stuff is the fabric of society itself! If you aren't providing universal education and healthcare as a government, what even is the point of you? (and yes, I know what that woman said about society)
@Janeishly Indeed. There's *only* society, but of course individualism benefits those who wish to destroy any prospect of collective action against them. "That woman", whose name shall not be uttered, also said the government has no money other than what's paid to it in taxes, words echoed by another woman, Theresa May, who said "there's no magic money tree".
There is indeed a Magic Money Tree, and it's called the Bank of England. And it's *our* money not theirs, released by parliamentary vote.